Blowing Smoke
Presidential campaigns often see candidates racing toward the political center, that elusive place where polling data says they need to find themselves come November. In the big picture that’s probably inevitable, as the center does shift slowly and there’s generally good political reason why it is where it is on any given day. But on the path to that center, candidates sometimes need to change positions, or at least appear open to prospects they’d previously found wrongheaded, to the endless dismay of those who expect real integrity from our future leaders. Both McCain and Obama you’ve probably noticed, have done more than their fair share of that this year. And in the process, bizarre non-solutions occasionally rise to the surface as something seemingly real, based entirely on the perceived traction candidates sometimes gain from embracing them. Senator McCain’s gas-tax holiday was one such non-solution, which despite its obvious irrelevance to the seriousness of our energy-supply issues, seemed to resonate with some people. And based perhaps on that suggestion’s almost-credible reception, a next logical non-solution seems to have followed, best described as to hell with beaches and polar bears and manatees, let’s just Drill Everywhere if it’ll get the price of oil down.
We for the record, would much prefer to pay $2 instead of $4 a gallon for our oil products. And though we hate to burst anyone’s bubble, we can drill all we want and maybe coat half our coastlines in toxic sludge, but it’s NOT going to affect the price any of us pay for oil. Not this year, not 10 or 20 years from now, not ever. And the reason’s simple: it’s not our oil, it’s the oil companies’ oil we’re talking about. And they don’t do what they do because it’s in our national interest. In fact they’ve got 68 million acres with proven reserves under lease in the US that they’re not even bothering to drill on. Why? Well if they wait till the price gets higher, it’ll be worth more.
This year, profits to the major American-based oil companies are projected to top $160 billion, up from $123 billion last year. This profit is effectively a tax we all pay, only we don’t pay it to the government but instead we pay it directly to the shareholders of these companies. And how much is $160 billion in real money? Well it works out to $533 a year for every man, woman and child the United States. That isn’t the cost we’ll each pay this year; that number is thousands of dollars per person. It’s just the portion of the cost representing the profits on our personal share - one three hundred millionth of our national consumption - that will be earned this year by the oil company stockholders. And the number doesn’t include any profit on the distribution of that product through wholesalers, fuel dealers, or gas stations…just on what’s sold out of the refineries. Now to be fair, much of that profit doesn’t come from sales in the US. But then, much of their product isn’t sold here either. And neither will much of what’s pumped if we permit it, off the coasts of Florida and California or from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Because even if we were to compel domestically sourced oil to be sold here, the oil companies would just divert an equivalent volume from existing sources to their non-US customers. So there wouldn’t be MORE oil in the US, or at lower prices. There would just be a little more oil going to the Chinese or wherever, all at same ever-increasing market price.
So the whole idea that we need to lease additional lands, onshore and off, for the oil companies to continue doing what they do to us, hardly seems much of a deal for American consumers. Congressman Hinchey described the whole scenario quite aptly recently, when he called it “a con job,” which it clearly is. What’s astonishing is that our mainstream media and maybe both presidential candidates even deem it worthy of discussion, based presumably on polling data which says Americans think new offshore drilling might be a good idea. Yeah, it’s a good idea for the oil companies. It’s a bad idea for the rest of us and for the ecosystems we’ve little choice but to protect where we can. Since Senator McCain announced his embrace of offshore drilling several months ago, oil industry contributions to his campaign have gone through the roof. So there’s one guy it seems who’s benefiting from the idea, but that’s hardly justification for a potentially disastrous national policy that benefits only the industry that needs help least.
What’s needed is a serious windfall profits tax on the oil industry, but what’s needed more is properly funded national commitment to developing alternative and renewable energy sources on a scale and with the seriousness that the situation actually warrants. In one way or another, the cost of energy and the way it’s changing the world’s political structure is probably the single most serious threat we face to our national security. The sooner such a commitment takes form, the better our prospect of seeing our standard of living recognizably intact a generation from now. Failing to do so, our leaders are all just blowing smoke. Thus far there’s been less of that and more straight talk from Obama on the subject. We’d like to think the time for talk of non-solutions is past. BP